Category: movies

CINEMASTHESIA MOVING IMAGE SERIES

co-sponsored by Monkey Brains & Central Services

933 Treat St, SF. Doors 6PM Movies 7PM

FREE!

donations gladly accepted

 

1st run: Psychgeography

Artwork by Hugh D’Andrade

A subjective take on filmic representations of various aspects of urban exploration (urbex, UE, place hacking, etc)

WEDNESDAYS> August 13th, Sept 10th, October 8th, November 5th & December 3rd – Doors 6PM, movies 7PM. 

 

August 13th: 

–To Live and Die in LA

Movies are the next best thing to real life, if your real life is dramatic, exciting, unnerving, joyous, terrifying, confusing, engaging, deeply depressing, and reflects all those and other feelings. If your life is not like that, then there are always movies.
The first two movies that I remember seeing as a young child are Santa Claus Conquers the Martiansstarring Pia Zadora and First Men in the Moon, starring Edward Judd.
I saw both of these films in a theater when I was about seven years old. I certainly saw stuff on teevee before that – we got our first B&W teevee a few months before John Kennedy was assassinated in 1963 and that is the first “teevee show” or rather ongoing dramatic news story that I remember vividly. I imagine that my memories of that horrible event were “baked in” due to how distraught and vocal my typically stolid and calm parents were.
That sort of thing has an effect on a youngster.

-LA River (short)

 

–Dark Days

To be clear, I don’t really remember much as far as actual full length narrative films before the moon and the martians. Both of these films really scared the poop out of me! They were really creepy. This deep impression has stayed with me til now, despite an adults eye revealing the undeniable hokeyness of both films.
The next, forever ingrained in memory movie experience of mine, was one that I shared with millions of Americans. And that would be the annual showing on television of The Wizard of Oz. This peculiar societal ritual might seem strange to younger people nowadays, but in the mid 1960s, it was a major event that millions of children & child-like adults awaited with great anticipation.  The Wizard of Oz became a deeply felt and profound collective cultural experience shared by so many fellow Americans (as far as phenomenal fantasy films of the 30’s I would vigorously champion MGM’s Max Reinhardt’s stupendously magical A Midsummer Nights Dream. I actually prefer it to WOZ.)

September 10th: 

–Subway

For me, as I grew older, going to the movies became a thing. I grew up mostly in a little town in Michigan that had one movie theater. My friends and I would go there as often as we could. I remember one night in 1973 when I went with three of my buddies to an evening showing of Richard Lester’s Three Musketeers. Rolling out of that movie house, we immediately grabbed the closest sticks and spent the next several hours chasing one all throughout the dark and quiet streets of Big Rapids Michigan sword fighting and leaping about as energetically as humanly possible. We eventually ended up climbing the old water tower right at the edge of town, where the Ferris College grounds started. We were thoroughly energized and brilliantly inspired by that fabulous action adventure movie. ATHOS!! PORTHOS!! AREMUS!!! and KEN!!      

That run around town under the cover of night pretending to Aramus after seeing one of the greatest adventure films ever, was a truly unforgettable experience, not to mention my first exposure to one of the gods of acting: Oliver Reed.
As we got a little bit older, we realized that if you went to the very back exit out of the theater, the one by the screen, that we could walk in backwards, while people were walking out and nobody would notice, and then we would quickly burrow down deep into the very front row of seats, where nobody from the back of the theater could see us. From there we would watch the movie, actors and movie scenarios towering high above us. We did this a lot. It’s how we, three 14 year-old kids, saw the scandalous and X-rated A Clockwork Orangewhen it first came out.

 

October 8th:

–Stalker

I finally made it to San Francisco in 1976 and a year later I joined the Suicide Cluband Communiversity. Suicide Club avatar and “first among equals” Gary Warne, along with his friend Ron Sol ran a thing they called Fantasy Film Festival out of Gary’s bookstore The Circus of the Soulon Judah at 10th Ave in San Francisco.

 

–Mad God 

 Gary stashed dozens and dozens of pillows atop the towering bookshelves in the store and every Sunday night we would move some things around, drag the pillows down and throw them on the floor; Gary would fire up his 16mm film projector and would show a double bill of what he & Ron thought were the strangest movies.

 

November 5th:

–The Element of Crime

2 years ago my friend Rob Schmitt created Films With Friends a wonderful North Beach film series taking place monthly at various venues. This series was unique to my knowledge because multiple films were screened at a number of venues simultaneously in the same neighborhood, the primary intent being to liven up the hood by encouraging folks both local and from other corners of the city to invite friends to wander about North Beach, either settling on one program or dropping in on a few.

 

-LA River (short)

 

–The Naked City

As you can see, I have been enamored of and involved in many atypical movie showings and series over the decades Fantasy Film Festival. Brain Wash Film Festival (a very scrappy low budget film series ongoing since the mid – 90s where films are shown in a great variety of peculiar places), original film premieres in the sewers under Yonkers, New York, Old Suicide Club movie showings in abandoned theaters as aesthetic programming for an actual physical event to follow, and all sorts of other great venues and peculiar methods of screening.

 

December 3rd:

–RoboCop

Not to mention the late 70s through the early 90s when San Francisco had as many as 25 repertory movie houses around the city that showed odd bills. The Strand, the Embassy with its 10-0 Win and one dollar entry cost. If you came to the Embassy when they opened at 10 in the morning, you could stay all day until midnight or 1, and people did.

–Big Trouble in Little China

I’ve wanted to do my own movie series for a long long time, but was always busy with other stuff or just didn’t really have the right venue. I would like to thank Rudy Rucker Jr. and “Devo” for graciously offering up their small company theater for this ongoing series. I am sure that like me most of you have your favorite end of the world movies. We’ll see how it goes. If we get a decent turnout for the first chapter, psychogeography then will run the second chapter Apocalypta.

Well, there are a lot of end of the world films, some of them are pretty obscure. I’ve wanted to run my favorite list of apocalypse films for a long long time. Hopefully I’ll get a chance to do it…

If we do get through to the third iteration, I encourage all of you to come out for the films of Larry Cohen. It’s impossible to describe them.

Seriously. If any film auteurs deserve their own category, Larry Cohen would surely be in there with Scorsese, Ingmar Bergman, Fellini, Polanski, and all the rest of the unique filmmakers. I’m not necessarily comparing Cohen to those others on a qualitative level mind you. But I can honestly say that at least for me as far as entertainment, it gets no better.!

DOGGIE DINER NEWS New improved!! Be the first on your block…….

Some people take this Doggie Diner stuff pretty damn seriously! Like my buff friend “Caution” Mike Connor.

The Bay Area is all about mixing metaphysics… er metaphors. Here is a great example created by awesome fine & graphics artist Erik Chipchase

1 – HEAD TRIP PUBLIC SCREENING (June 21st North Beach SF)

2 – ONLINE MOVIE RELEASE (late June 2023)

3 – DOGS IN GG PARK (October 2022 – September 2023) (new audio art QRS codes on Dogs in GG Park in June!)

 

here is the Telegraph Hill Dwellers press release:

MOVIE EVENT_PRESS RELEASE

 

HEAD TRIP PUBLIC SCREENING:

SAVOY TIVLOI 1434 GRANT AVE SF

WEDNESDAY JUNE 21ST 7PM

Q&A WITH CO-DIRECTORS John Law & Flecher Fleurdujon AND movie star/protagonist Jarico Reese of SF Cyclecide.

Head Trip is a full length documentary film featuring the Doggie Diner Dogheads on a cross country trip to New York City during “Shock and Awe” 2003. The idea was to spread good cheer cross-country during a tough time. As you will see in the film there was some success. The tour and film were made in collusion with San Francisco’s own punk rock bicycle club Cyclecide with support from Laughing Squid & Christina Harbridge.

Please watch this short trailer for the movie to be found in this wonderful article on the cross country road trip that inspired to movie: https://laughingsquid.com/head-trip-a-doggie-diner-dog-head-cross-country-documentary/We will be re-premiering the full film at Savoy Tivoli on Grant Street in North Beach on Wednesday, June 21st as part of the premier event Films With Friends. Look for the lone 10 foot tall Doggie Diner Head parked out front. The film is a part of a new series sponsored by THOSE GUYS PRESENTS. Brainchild of noted prankster/cineaste/film collector Rob Schmitt, this exciting new series will be taking place in various locations in the BEST NEIGHBORHOOD IN SAN FRANCISCO, NORTH BEACH monthly through the Summer/Fall. more information to come.

Kevin Evans, co-author (along with yours truly & Carrie Galbraith) created dozens of EC Comic style “factoids” for the book.

 

ONLINE MOVIE RELEASE:

The film was recently spruced up by Suicide Club/Cacophony and Burning Man stalwart filmmaker/composer Steve Mobia using the original mini-dv tape and it looks better than ever! Head Trip has never lived on line ever with the exception of a short trailer on Youtube and various news articles about the road trip and film premier in 2008. Head Trip will be released on SF Cacophony Society Youtube page sometime to be announced after the June 21st public screening.

 

DOGS IN GG PARK:

Last July or so I ran into old acquaintance Bay Lights impresario and Illuminate the Arts honcho Ben Davis at Brian Goggins wonderful monthly art salon. Ben told me about his most recent scheme The Golden Mile project that he was conjuring up with SF Parks and Rec. He asked if I would consider placing the three Dogs (Manny, Moe & Jack) in the park, right in the middle of J.F.K. Drive as part of the installation. As steward for trio, I do not monetize them – no commercial rentals or paid cameos. The Dogs weigh 600 pounds (apiece!) and are ten foot tall. They are very awkward to move off of their (semi)permanent rolling trailer base.  Free to the people, Ben was able to secure City $ to pay a fair price for the heavy duty engineered Dog bases and transport. The best (weird jobs) contractor/builder/art handler crew in SF lead by Paul Troutman assisted by William Collister esq, Mile Schoening and Chuck Floyd did the work. The boys built heavy duty 8′ x 8′ square tube bases attractively clad in deco-designed plywood covers. They then installed Manny, Moe & Jack on their new pedestals right in the middle of John F. Kennedy Drive!
NEW AUDIO HISTORY -look for QR codes posted on the Dog bases in Golden Gate Park starting in mid-June. Petrina Robins is constructing fascinating and in-depth audio files constructed from my voluminous archive of Doggie Diner history going back to the 1950’s. Just point your tiny super computer/phone at the QR code & the audio will magically manifest.

Yes, the Dogs were once upon a time the paid cartoon shills for a hamburger joint, and there is a lot of classic history, but they eventually became unhinged from their commercial moorings decades ago and since have transmogrified into something different, something a little ineffable, a bit metaphysical. I cannot define it, but the Dogs emanate some strong, whimsical essence and most people that run across them are bemused and left with a positive and cheery feeing. I have watched a thousand times as people on the street smile when we would drive by with the three massive mastiffs on the trailer. Older SF natives always will recognize them and crack huge smiles as the Dogs sweep by often calling out: “DOGGIE DINER! DOGGIE DINER!! I used to eat/work/hang out there!
MISC DOGGIE PRESS:
With an interest in providing as much information as might be available in order for people to kind of understand a little bit about what the Doggy Diner Dog Heads are and why they “might” be important im some bizarre fashion, I have compiled a very partial list of past articles. Read en masse by anyone bored and or obsessive enough to actually take the time to read all of this stuff, maybe it will become clear to you. I wouldn’t bet on it though!
Here’s a good place to start. This is a fairly in depth, delightfully thoughtful article by Chronicle writer Amanda Bartlett:
Following are two pieces about the recent placement of the DogHeads in Golden Gate Park. Thanks to Ben Davis and SF Park & Rec for engineering this installaton and for (respectively) allowing it to occur:
Restoration process:
I am quotes here under my retired Cacophony pseudonym “Sebastian Melmoth”
Some history:
Road trip with DogHeads to New York City with Cyclecide Bike Rodeo, supported by Laughing Squid in 2003:
Almost kicked out of Oakland 22 years ago:
Official San Francisco Doggy Diner head restored at original location by City of SF:
Only in San Francisco politics!:
One of the many celebrations after San Francisco Made Doggy Diner into a city landmark. We had several speak engagements over the years including presentations by Mayor Ed Lee. Did I say, “only in San Francisco”?
I just saw the following video for the first time. I didn’t realize that it existed. It’s hard to actually believe that such things can happen and have some actual resonance and small importance in the larger scheme of things. This is why I still love San Francisco, despite all of the ills that we know so well. It’s still the best town in the country.
Art(?):

https://laughingsquid.com/?s=Doggie+Diner

https://johnwlaw.com/2014/01/20/dog-days/

https://sfist.com/doggie-diner/

Doggie Diner history video youtube

SOME MORE DOG INFO (STUFF ABOUT HEAD TRIP, the movie) :

CD cover for the film Head Trip 2009 - never released online til NOW!

CD cover for the film Head Trip 2009

 

 

 

 

                                                                Starting back in 2003 my friend Flecher Fleurdujon & I made a feature movie about a journey spanning the breadth of America accompanied by three 10 foot tall 300lb chef’s hat & bowtie adorned dachshund heads and a crew of punk rock bicycle clowns called Cyclecide Bike Rodeo. Completed in 2009, the movie was in a couple of film festivals, played at The Roxie in SF for a week & at two showing of almost 500 folks at Rythmix Cultural Works in Alameda CA.  The movie played a few more times, but that was it. It has never been online in all the intervening years.

Well before we embarked on our road trip/movie shoot, the giant grinning heads had been the official mascots of The Cacophony Society and The First Church of the Last Laugh. They were recognized all about the SF Bay Area from their tenure as totemic representatives of a local fast food franchise and our contribution to the Doggie Diner legacy was to deconstructed the former commercial icons and facilitate their “re-christening” as disembodied former commercial icons.  By the time we started our film project, we had been hauling the three fiberglas objects all around to various non-commercial, often non-profit, nonsensical events as well as City events and parades of various stripes for years.

I met Flecher Fleurdujon when he was 7 or 8 years old back in 1977. Over the succeeding years Flech evolved into an accomplished musician, band leader and videographer. Loving fruitful collaborative work as I do, I had imagined a project where I could work with my friend. “Flech” was the son of my Suicide Club friend Mary Grauberger. I lived a few blocks from Mary with my roommate (another Mary) Mary Friedman and her kids Ben and Nellie. Flech was the same age, and the three of them were in the Suicide Club as the kid contingent. These three and a few other youngsters routinely accompanied their elders into sewers, abandoned factories and the occasional embarrassing foray into “street theater”. Flech was a great kid filled with energy and creativity.

Some years earlier Mary had inspired two stoner friends with a yearly solstice beach art event she organized starting in the late 70’s where she invited her hippie friends to meet her at Baker Beach, bringing musical instruments, food & art. Oh, she encouraged her peeps to burn some of the art. These two fellows went on to start the first Burning Man also at Baker Beach in 1986

During the early Suicide Club adventures, I carried an eight year old Flech on my back into some pretty sketch environments…  12 years or so later, Flech was my assistant at the second Desert Site Works event at Trego Springs on the Black Rock Desert.  Already established as operations guy for the ever growing desert bacchanal, my duties at the annual Burning Man event included transportation, set up & clean up. For the liminal Desert Site Works I assumed the same responsibilities . For the preliminary set up, I desperately needed a helper and asked Mary G if I could conscript Flech.

He and I loaded a 24′ Ryder box truck with a ton of stuff. drove to the proverbial middle of nowhere and dumped all the  stuff into a pile next to Trego spring. I had many errands to run and left 17 year old Flech to hold down the site, handing him a Remington Wingmaster Pump action 12ga. shotgun “just in case”.

Ten years later I was sitting in $teven Ra$pa’s lovely apartment on Rincon Hill along with Scott Beale, Helena “Noona” Sullivan, and a half dozen other local event folks and we were planning a Laughing Squid hosted and underwritten NYC event to take place at CBGB’s 313 Art Gallery (affiliated with & next door to the infamous punk club) that would showcase a roster of our SF and NYC underground performers and characters. The session was lively and productive. Then, out of the blue, Noona shouted: “HEY! John! we HAVE TO BRING THE DOGS!!” – like that was a good idea… I literally cringed and shrunk back in my comfy chair, shouting loudly and to the derisive laughter of my associates: “no, No, NO, NO!!!”  because I KNEW just how much really dirty heavy work, planning and $ that such a feat would require……. To make a long story short, we made it happen and you can see the results in our movie Head Trip…

I hope that you enjoy the feature movie that Flecher and I made with the help of a cast and crew of hundreds, showcasing The Doggie Diner Dog Heads as they traversed the great American continent to New York City falling into many improbable and serentypical adventures along the way

Thanks to Scott Beale and Laughing Squid for helping produce the original cross country trip the movie is based upon and later help producing and exhibiting the movie on screens in California, NYC & Florida in 2009 & 2010. Thanks to my ex-wife Christina Harbridge for her support during the making of the movie and special thanks also to Cyclecide Bike Rodeo for wrangling the whole shebang and all the heavy lifting…

illustration from Tales of the San Francisco Cacophony Society 2013 Last Gasp SF. Authors/editors Carrie Galbraith, Kevin Evans & John Law

 

CD cover for the film Head Trip 2009 (page 6)

CD cover for the film Head Trip 2009 (page 7

CD cover for the film Head Trip 2009 (page 8)

CD cover for the film Head Trip 2009 (page 9)

CD cover for the film Head Trip 2009 (page 10)

CD cover for the film Head Trip 2009 (page 5)

 

San Francisco’s restored Dog Head mounted at the SF Zoo, Sloat and 46th Ave. Restoration by SFDPW, Ed Lee, Mohammed Nuru, Rachael Gordon, Pete Misthos http://doggiediner.com/pages/doggie_saved.html

 

The Holy Trinity of the dominican Order at The Carousel (formerly Doggie Diner) Ocean Beach SF circa 2001. Art car by Philo Northrup. Photo by Harrod Blank

The Dogs at Chinatown Gate SF photo: Winni Wintermeyer https://www.3am.net

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The 1st Church of the Last Laughs Annual St Stupid's Day Parade

The 1st Church of the Last Laughs Annual St Stupid’s Day Parade

 

 

 

One of dozens of Doggie-Zippy cartoons by Bill Griffith

mini-Dogs by Loid Mongoloid made for the DD Kickstart for the DOG restoration.

 

Doggie Diner history video youtube